Day # 698:The Life not Lived vs. The Life Well Lived

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them”-Henry David Thoreau

We all have two lives, the one we live and the one we wish we could live. What’s the difference? Why do we all have the life we dream about but we never get a chance to live? In the book Maximizing Your Potential, Myles Munroe, wrote that the wealthiest place on earth is the grave yard. There you have all the potential not realized lying dormant. The book not written, the poem not written, the painting never painted, the invention that could alleviate poverty in the world never invented, the cure to cancer. All lying down in the grave yard. And n ‘re things will join them.

How did the people who overcame their own lack of talent, time, money, go ahead and create the things that changed our world ?

What’s the difference between Einstein, Madam Currie, Leonardo Da Vinci and many others who have defined and created the world we live in right now? Certainly not brain power. There were smarter humans alive during the same time these men were doing the great work that has impacted our world.

The Story of Einstein

Consider Albert Einstein, who was so poor in his class he couldn’t get a job after graduating from the Federal Polytechnic in Zurich where he trained to be a teacher in Physics. His father wrote several letters to his friends trying to get Einstein a job, but Einstein could never get a job. He was so poor as a student no university would accept him as a teaching assistant. Einstein eventually got a clerical job at the Swiss Patent Office. His work was to curate and file all patents and inventions submitted to the Swiss Patent Office. Very basic and mind numbing job. Einstein took this job with aplomb. He used the opportunity to learn more about all the great inventions happening at that time. More importantly, he had more time to think and write.

In 1905, while in this boring job, Einstein published four groundbreaking papers, on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy, which were to bring him to the notice of the academic world.his theory of general relativity and also gave us the formulae E=MC (square).

Einstein was 26 at that time. He wasn’t a genius, he wasn’t even considered ‘smart’. He was not an ‘A’ student.

What did Einstein do during those 4 years between 26 and 30 that changed what we have come to know about him today?The short answer, Einstein lived, worked. Einstein didn’t only dream of the life he wanted to live, we worked. He wrote those papers while maintaining his day job.